I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly
by Mia-Zeklos
Summary: While Ianto's busy looking at the stars, Jack finds himself looking at something else.


**Author's Notes: Written by a prompt on **_**OTP Prompts**_** on tumblr: **_**Imagine person A in your OTP having lost a lover before and slowly falling in love with person B despite being afraid of losing them.**_

**The quote in the beginning and the title are from Sarah Williams.**

**More or less something I've been meaning to write for quite a while and it was really intense to write, so I hope you enjoy it and don't be afraid to let me know what you think!**

_Though my soul may set in darkness,_

_it will rise in perfect light._

_I have loved the stars too fondly_

_to be fearful of the night._

When Jack finally found him, Ianto was still where he'd followed him to on the CCTV – Bute Park, one of the benches on the main alley where there were no trees. He'd been there for at least half an hour and Jack had tried calling him, but to no avail. He'd either left his phone at the Hub – which wasn't really typical – or he'd just turned it off. That wasn't really typical either, so the Captain had gone on a search for him.

The man spotted him as Jack strode down the alley and smiled, giving him a little wave.

"What are you doing here?" Ianto asked, keeping his voice down despite the fact that there was no one left in the park but them – it _was_ one in the morning, after all – and he patted the bench next to him absent-mindedly. "I thought you were still in the Hub."

"I was, and then Tosh told me that you were being weird and that you left at eight, which you hardly ever do. Then she left and I spent a healthy amount of time trying to track you down."

"You shouldn't have bothered," Ianto said, voice still quiet. "I'm okay, I just wanted to– I don't know, really." He sighed. "I like this place. There's never anyone around here."

Jack nodded as he settled down next to Ianto. He knew that the younger man wasn't a big fan of people in general, and there were moments when Ianto found even the Hub too crowded an environment and saved himself in the archives.

"It's fine," he assured. "It's not healthy for you to stay until late at night at work anyway."

Ianto laughed softly. "And it's very healthy to stay alone in the park until the wee hours, is it?"

"'s better, that's for sure," Jack said after a moment's thought. "What are you doing here, actually? If you wanted to be alone, you could have gone home."

It was then – before Ianto had the chance to respond – that Jack noticed that he was looking up at the sky. "I needed that," Ianto said simply and the Captain followed his gaze.

It had been an unusually clear day for the early September in Cardiff and it had slowly transformed into an equally clear evening. Yes, the nights were gradually getting longer and colder, but tonight the air was just pleasantly chilly and the wind was caressing Jack's skin gently.

What had apparently drawn Ianto's attention, though, was the sky. The stars were as much – if not more – as it was possible to see in a city, but his lover seemed to be completely enraptured by them.

He tended to do that, Jack had noticed, and he could easily believe that Ianto had been here for more than three hours doing nothing but looking at the stars as they appeared one by one as the evening crept closer. He'd done it before and Jack had been with him on several occasions, and he still couldn't quite understand how he never got bored by it.

What _Jack_ couldn't get bored of, though, was watching Ianto in moments such as this one. There was something almost surreal about his lover when he looked up at the sky; his face always lit up and his eyes widened as if he wanted to take it all in at once. Those eyes, Jack thought, so similar to the colour of the sky just after sunset in the summer, that reflected the stars until the Captain could see entire constellations in them. There was always that quiet awe and subtle admiration that took Jack's breath away. He could get lost in those eyes as easily as Ianto got lost in the stars.

There was another quiet laugh from the man in question. "What is it?" he asked softly, a small, gentle smile playing at his lips. "You always do that, you know."

"Do what?" Jack immediately tried to look indifferent and was pretty sure that he failed.

"Staring at me when I come here. I'm not doing anything interesting. I don't know how you don't get tired of it."

"How don't _you_?" Jack shot back quickly, trying to take the topic as far away from himself as possible. "It's all the same every night, isn't it? It's not like the stars ever change." And if they did, Ianto's life wasn't long enough to see them do it. He didn't say it, but it hung in the air anyway. His partner didn't seem to notice.

Ianto's smile widened and Jack found himself smiling in response – his lover was rarely so enthusiastic about anything and it was contagious.

"How could I possibly?" He didn't wait for an answer before going on. "There's so much to see" They're all unique and, if you look at each star long enough, you can even tell at what stage of their life they're at."

"You might, I don't," Jack pointed out. Ianto's love for astronomy had quickly taken over Torchwood's search engines and Jack had seen him run all sorts of researches on that as personal projects.

Ianto moved an inch or two closer to him and pointed at the sky. "See that there? I've read about it. It's a red dwarf. And that one over there's a pulsar; you can even see it without looking too hard. A white giant over there. The Torchwood database has information on all our neighbouring galaxies and there's just so much of it all that–"

Ianto's voice died and he seemed overwhelmed by the mere thought. Jack felt his breath catch in his throat.

"They're thousands of light years away from here," he said, voice slightly shaky. "Balls of gas and fire, nothing more."

Ianto's smile was wistful. "You've seen too much of them if you think that. Either that, or you've seen too little."

"And what do you find so impressive?" Jack challenged, genuinely curious. He wanted to understand; wanted to see it through his lover's eyes. Longed for the happiness that Ianto could get out of simply staring at the sky at night.

"Just what you said, actually." Ianto's eyes were directed upwards again. "They're thousands of light years away from here, and look at them. We can see all of that. And somewhere, Jack, somewhere far away, there's someone looking up, just now, seeing a completely different set of stars – or the same, but in different order – and they can probably see our Sun as well. And it doesn't feel like we're too small, not to me. It feels like we're enormous. How can we be small if we can be seen from so far away?"

Ianto didn't seem to be expecting an answer and, since Jack didn't have one, he just went back to quietly observing him.

He couldn't afford this. Couldn't let himself _feel _so much towards someone so fragile, not after he'd lost so many people so many times before. Ianto felt like a porcelain doll to him sometimes; with his finely sculpted face and pale skin under the moonlight, he was like a ghost that only Jack had the privilege to see. The stars that burn the brightest often burn for the shortest time, as the saying went.

And wasn't that what love was, in the end? Burning brightly in someone else's eyes?

He couldn't. He just couldn't allow himself to love him. But he did. And it threatened to tear him apart some time soon.

Because one day, Ianto Jones would break him to pieces and even his immortality wouldn't be able to put him back together.

"Have you ever thought," Jack started, voice strangely heavy, "that maybe you love the stars so much because they're too far away for you to reach?"

Ianto shook his head. "Not really. Why would you take pleasure in loving something you can't have?" There was a pause which Jack filled with a short, bitter laugh. "I can't really explain it. They're everywhere I look, and they light up the world without even knowing it. Think about it; they just _burn_, and all we can do is watch them, because it's so beautiful, Jack. So beautiful that it hurts."

Jack didn't look away from his lover as Ianto's eyes focused on the sky once more. "Yes," he said quietly and finally gave in to the feeling that he'd been trying to chase away for so long. "Yes, I think I can see it now."


End file.
